Blockworks Acquires Messari

Blockworks is acquiring Messari in what the participants describe as the capstone of Blockworks' evolution from a media and events company, founded in December 2017, into a data business it has been building toward for approximately four years. The combined entity claims to hold the largest crypto dataset by a wide margin, with Messari covering 40,000 assets and operating what is described as probably the strongest API in the industry, spanning assets, markets, exchange data, news, on-chain and off-chain events, research, stablecoins, protocol data, network data, token unlocks, fundraising, social sentiment, event monitoring, and watchlists.

The strategic rationale centers on Messari's founding mission around data standardization and its push into the enterprise segment over the last two years, which complements Blockworks' need for greater data breadth to serve institutional customers entering crypto. AI agents are described as the fastest-growing customer segment of Messari at the time of the recording. Blockworks frames its combined business around a three-layer stack consisting of a disclosure layer built on a framework called the TTF, a standardized data layer, and a financial institution compliance and monitoring layer covering diligence, monitoring, and data piping.

The two primary customer categories are issuers of on-chain assets, including protocols, foundations, stablecoin and RWA issuers, and on-chain applications, and underwriters of on-chain assets, including investors, regulators, exchanges, custodians, fintechs, payment providers, and brokerages. Blockworks positions itself as the center of gravity connecting these two groups and uses a land-and-expand strategy starting with deep data mapping of token issuers. Companies including Stripe, BlackRock, and Robinhood are described as attempting on-chain activity but blocked by the inability to monitor assets, track users on-chain, and understand on-chain financials, which the combined stack is intended to address.

The speakers identify the tokenization of capital markets as the most important trend in crypto, encompassing stablecoins, RWAs, treasuries, bonds, and equities moving on-chain, and argue that rebuilding global finance on-chain represents a potential multi-trillion dollar opportunity even if it is the only use case crypto produces. A central problem they identify is that crypto data cannot currently be trusted, with even on-chain metrics potentially reflecting incentivized rather than organic activity. Crypto founders are described as regularly posting revenue figures overstated by ten times, which one speaker characterizes as analogous to criminal conduct for public company CEOs. The absence of punitive consequences for misrepresenting information is identified as the missing link preventing accurate standardized data from emerging. The speakers argue that incentive campaigns driving volume spikes are a legitimate strategy but should require disclosure so market participants can make informed decisions.

The speakers draw comparisons to Moody's, cited as an approximately 80 billion dollar business, and S&P, cited as approximately 120 billion dollars, noting that traditional capital markets information platforms required enormous headcount to operate whereas crypto data is already digital, structured, real-time, transparent, and public, reducing that requirement substantially. They predict that combining on-chain data with AI could enable credit scoring of bond issuances at ten percent of current cost and near-instantly, and that an AI-native, on-chain-native information platform could outcompete legacy incumbents despite their head start.

The speakers characterize the ideological shift in crypto as moving from disrupting finance to making existing financial infrastructure operate significantly better. They express the view that crypto-native firms that have been building for eight years will be highly disruptive to incumbent financial firms entering the space, and describe banks taking over as not a foregone conclusion. Fixing token performance is described as existential for the industry because the industry does not function without the tokens, and standard disclosures and accessible data are presented as necessary to direct capital to the right founders.